'Integrity' absent from election bill

Was anyone in this fair state complaining that too many of its citizens were voting for their leadership or that the process was too convenient?

No.

But those are the "problems'' the General Assembly decided needed remedying last week with its election "reform'' bill.

The legislation offered up at the 11th hour - legislation that magically turned from around a dozen pages in length to a catch-all mess of more than 50 pages - offered to: trim the incredibly popular early voting period by a week; wipe out same-day registration; end straight-party ticket voting; put restrictions on provisional voting; put restrictions on what IDs would be accepted at the polls (no state college IDs, for example); end early registrations of teens before their 18th birthday; end the public financing of judicial races; end voting awareness efforts; increase the amount of money flowing into campaigns; end the requirement that candidates endorse their political ads.

And what brought about these sweeping changes?

Voter fraud. Voter fraud, it was claimed over and over, was rampant. Evidence of this was not. Oh, occasionally a story would pop up and bounce around the echo chamber of talk radio and certain cable channels, such as the claim last year that 932 dead people had voted in South Carolina's 2010 election. An extensive review was made regarding this smoking gun and turned up mundane problems such as mismatching living persons with dead ones. Not a single "zombie voter'' was found.

That claim was a cornerstone in passing South Carolina's photo ID push.

North Carolina's call for Voter ID law is designed to keep a person from hijacking another voter's identity to cast a vote. That's already a serious crime, an incredibly dumb way to try to sway an election and is a practice that is as rare as unicorns.

But for the sake of argument, let's say it happens. As such, that's a shame, because somebody gets to vote twice and deprives another of getting to vote once.

Well, we have some solid numbers on that. In 2012, 155,000 voters registered at the polls. When the new legislation kicks in, that can't happen. The state estimates 316,000 registered voters don't have a state-issued ID, and 138,000 of them voted in 2012. Barring a successful journey to fulfill the new requirements, they're out of luck as well.

Assurances have been given that pains will be taken to get those folks ID, but the odds are dead certain a lot of those people won't have the time or transportation to get that ID. They'll lose their shot at the prospect of getting to vote once.

And - what are the odds? - the majority of them are Democrats. A cynic would call this a political ploy.

Actually, any observer of the evidence would call it an outright political power play, so that's what we'll call it.

This appears to be a page ripped straight from the playbook in Florida, where enough barriers to voting were raised that an estimated 200,000 voters simply got tired of waiting in line and went home.

It's very, very easy to envision the same result here. And that would be a shame on many levels.

North Carolina long had a terrible record of participating in democracy, with voter turnout among the worst in the country - in the bottom 15 states - on a routine basis.

The sort of conveniences now being overturned had launched us into the top 15 states for turnout. A large part of that can be credited to the fact 57 percent of all North Carolina voters were able to conveniently cast their vote early.

That apparently just won't do. And a solution was trotted out, hiding behind the word "integrity.''

The new GOP supermajorities in the House and Senate and the new hold on the governorship came with a call about restoring the people's shaken faith in the integrity of the state's elections.

Given what's happened in Raleigh over the last month, perhaps there's a case to be made for that after all.

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'Integrity' absent from election bill

Was anyone in this fair state complaining that too many of its citizens were voting for their leadership or that the process was too convenient?